An Apothecary Dreams

The Student:

Katherine Crighton, master of fine arts candidate, Interactive Media and Game Design

The Committee:

Karen Stewart (chair), assistant teaching professor; Gillian Smith, associate professor; and Joshua Rosenstock, professor; all with Interactive Media and Game Development

Overview

Using books and journals written 500 years ago and throughout the Early Modern period, Crighton employed experimental archeology and arts-based research to reconstruct apothecary recipes of household personal items, such as lip balms, fragrances, and lotions.

Background

From their website: “Between the early days of blowing up my kitchen (twice) and discovering I’d made a mucilaginous hydrocolloid, I realized that the books I was learning from—that were teaching me to become a natural philosopher, a perfumer, a chemist, an apothecary—were essentially a time capsule of science: When I opened them, I was shown the invention of the scientific method and the sheer human spirit that fuels our drive to both question our world and find answers in it. And through my research, I was contributing to that time capsule, adding more pages to a book that never truly closes.”

Capstone

Crighton created a three-day art installation in Higgins House for audiences to experience their learning journey in researching and reconstructing apothecary recipes from the 1480s to the 1710s. For their project, subtitled “An Interactive Time Capsule Inventing Science Past, Present, and Beyond,” they invited participants to read, touch, smell, and listen to elements of their research, including attempts—both successful and unsuccessful—to interpret apothecaries’ instructions written in early modern English using unfamiliar (and sometimes unavailable) ingredients of the time.

They also invited viewers “to examine and reflect on the nature of knowledge and science, and the ephemeral ways shared knowledge transcends place and time” and leave a message to be included in a time capsule to be opened 500 years in the future.